What’s Happening In Minnesota? part 7

The referee in Minnesota’s hotly contested Senate race must act in a nonpartisan fashion, yet Ritchie came to office through a nationwide partisan strategy. He was elected in 2006 as part of a national campaign to ensure that Democrats could wield influence in precisely the sort of hair’s breadth race we now have here.

Ritchie gained office with the help of the Secretary of State Project (SOS), an independent 527 group co-founded by former MoveOn.org leader James Rucker. SOS is based in San Francisco, and is funded in part by ultra-liberal kingmakers such as George Soros. …

“National Democratic groups … are pouring resources” into secretary of state races in key swing states, in order to enhance their control in future tight elections, said [USA Today]. Minnesota was one of the top six states targeted.

Ritchie was the SOS poster boy, and SOS co-founder Becky Bond took credit for his victory. …

On the day before last week’s election, the respected on-line journal Politico predicted that these SOS victories would bear fruit this year. “Democrats have built an administrative firewall designed to protect their electoral interests in five of the most important battleground states,” Politico said. As a result, they are now “in a more advantageous position when it comes to the interpretation and administration of election law….”

You’d think Democrats would be content with last week’s electoral rout. But judging from the odd doings in Minnesota, some in their party wouldn’t mind adding to their jackpot by stealing a Senate seat for left-wing joker Al Franken. …

Up in Two Harbors, another liberal outpost, Mr. Franken picked up an additional 246 votes. In Partridge Township, he racked up another 100. Election officials in both places claim they initially miscommunicated the numbers. Odd, because in the Two Harbors precinct, none of the other contests recorded any changes in their vote totals. …

The Franken campaign has also been wrapping itself around Barack Obama’s popularity to increase its recount potential. Minnesota has a voter intent law, which means that election officials can take a second look at ambiguous ballots. Mr. Franken’s people are already arguing that a vote for Mr. Obama certainly indicated a vote for Mr. Franken. This can’t possibly be true, however, because nearly every campaign poll showed Mr. Franken lagging Mr. Obama by five to 15 percentage points — and on Election Day he trailed by 12.2%. Mr. Franken ran a nasty, polarizing campaign, and in any case he was part of a three-man contest.

Currently, the biggest unanswered question involves Two Harbors, a small town on the north shore of Lake Superior, where, as the Journal notes, 246 additional votes cropped up for Al Franken (but no other candidates) well after the election was over. So far, neither St. Louis County officials (Democrats) nor Minnesota’s Democratic Secretary of State has been willing to tell the Coleman campaign where these votes came from or why the total was changed.

Finally, here is video of my appearance on Hannity and Colmes last night. If you don’t get the dead fish references, don’t worry; neither did I: